Part VI. Problems
Life itself is a problem, broken into parts. We still live.
Problems are no different from all the other steps forward in life: you face them, you decide, you act, and you learn, again and again and again.
––John Roberts
Problems are messages.
––Shakti Gawain
Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
––Nelson Rockefeller
In principle, there are healthy and unhealthy modes of coping with depression, as with other emotions. The less healthy pattern entails efforts to anesthetize oneself against it, as with alcohol or meaningless busywork. The healthier patterns include making efforts to understand the causes of the depression and making a direct attack on these causes wherever possible. It should be pointed out, however, that it frequently takes a lot of time to understand one’s depression…. The ability to endure the depression with some stoicism may be called for.
––Sidney M. Jourard, Personal Adjustment, 2nd Ed., 1963
The effect of a major depression on your body is substantial. First, it tends to accelerate other illnesses. For example, If you have diabetes, it makes your diabetes worse. That’s why depression adds to disability. Depression also impairs your behavior. If you’re apathetic and you cease to care, you’re not going to take your medications as well as you might. You may overuse alcohol or not watch your diet, because you don’t care.
––Gary J. Kennedy, “In the Shadows,”
The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2007
The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat.
––Robert Lewis Stevenson
The optimists say that problems and failures are merely opportunities to improve. By thinking that way, we eliminate worrying and change negative thinking to positive. Watch successful people and you may well see them deal with happy opportunities and difficult problems with the same positive attitude and organized process. Their spirit and optimism infect everything they do. They know that approaching problems with pessimism or a lack of vitality will endanger the result. At the same time, however, we may have to accept that we may suffer some unavoidable degree of depression and pessimism until the problem is removed, but we must not allow it to hinder our effort. It is possible to fight fiercely when we can’t find the motivation, simply because we know we must in order to survive.
Some problems must be solved, some may be ignored and many are not really problems at all except in our own minds. The latter should be swept aside, or solved quickly, or approached with a revised attitude. We must deal with our illness without these distractions and misuse of time. Illness should cause us to focus on important things, especially our fight to survive.
I have always emphasized priorities, not only establishing them, but also revising them to keep the list current and in the correct order, and being able to multi-task. I still have to force myself to do away with things I care about or that are only half-finished in order to concentrate on what is most important. Always with many interests, I also have to fight the desire to get into things that I no longer have time for, however much I would love it. Priorities and focus are daily activities. Fighting cancer is usually at the top, replaced temporarily by the regular enjoyment of life.
We must also recognize that we probably have not changed and will tend to procrastinate or try to convince our worrying minds that difficult problems do not exist or are not important. Remaining cheerful and positive does not mean we ignore the reality of life and the things that must be done to improve our long-term outlook. To accept a new problem and make a plan to solve it is to achieve partial success and this also helps the mind to see the solution. Some problems, such as a chronic illness, cannot be removed, only dealt with. This is the greatest challenge, maintaining a good life that isolates the negative effects of everything that threatens our endless happiness.
